As SCAG Talks Environmental Justice, Tea Party Group Hones in on E.D.

Each red dot on this map is a concentration of 1,000 low-income households. The green is the parkland in the six-county SCAG region. Access to these parks is one issue that SCAG is trying to deal with in its Environmental Justice planning. Click on the map for a larger version. Graphic via SCAG.

Regional planning documents and hearings are hardly exciting to write about. Interminably long public meetings, wonky terms, never-ending studies. It’s one reason that Streetsblog hardly covers the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG), even though the regional plan it puts out is incredibly important in determining which projects receive federal funds and which ones don’t.

Fortunately for the sake of clicks and page views, but unfortunately for public policy, the Tea Party is taking aim at SCAG Executive Director Hasan Ikhrata just as the agency is holding Environmental Justice workshops in advance of the 2016 Regional Plan. Meeting details for its second of two outreach meetings are at the bottom of this post. You can also email comments on the plan to johnson@scag.ca.gov​.

SCAG is required to provide an explanation of how its regional planning impacts disadvantaged communities and communities of color. Advocacy groups have rightly noted that this requirement is one lever that can be used to re-direct funds away from the types of highway projects that have traditionally divided minority and less-affluent communities and instead use it to reinvest in those areas by providing better access to parks and public transit, more open space, and safer and more attractive facilities for walking, bicycling, or just being outside.

Coverage of the current SCAG efforts on Environmental Justice by Climate Plan and the Safe Routes to Schools National Partnership help explain in greater detail how these meetings, and this part of the plan, provide excellent opportunity to increase the investment in active transportation and disadvantaged communities for anyone who wants to learn more.

The post by Climate Plan is particularly interesting as it calls for, in the wonky way that regional planners prefer, better outreach to disadvantaged and communities of color, creating environmental justice metrics and tracking that can be broken down for each of the six counties in the SCAG region and a full analysis on the health impacts that the poor air quality created by Southern California’s freeways has on the communities they cut through.

If all of Climate Plan’s suggestions become part of the regional plan, it would have an impact on what kinds of projects get built similar to a Measure R2 that sets aside hundreds of millions of dollars for active transportation. Maybe not right away, but it would change the way the region talks about transportation.

Any chance that will happen would go away if the public comment they receive is dominated by people asking for greater investment in our already sprawling and gigantic highway system.

Ikhrata, on the far right, defends the I-710 Big Dig project at last May’s Zocalo Public Square meeting. Image:## http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2014/05/08/figuring-out-the-710-freeways-future/events/the-takeaway/##Zocalo##

I sometimes get in trouble when I try to be cute and sarcastic when writing about anything involving race and religion, so let me be blunt. Even though Grindal61 doesn’t make any mention of religion, some of the commenters to the video do and it goes uncorrected and unchallenged. I have no idea what religion, if any, Ikhrata practices. I really don’t care. It is completely immaterial to any discussion of his job performance and priorities nor those of SCAG.

As laughable as the video campaign against Ikhrata is, the environmental justice component of SCAG’s regional plan is too important to let the public process be hijacked by groups pushing a separate political agenda. If you can’t make it tomorrow night, be sure to send SCAG a message at johnson@scag.ca.gov​.

It doesn’t have to be long, or in-depth; just let them know how you feel about using progressive transportation planning to help roll back some of the transportation planning disasters from last century.

Unfortunately, the discussion of environmental justice can both ways – some people in East LA testified at the public hearings that they supported the highway tunnel precisely because it will distribute health impacts to White communities in Pasadena and South Pasadena, compared with the (strawman) light rail option which would demolish the strip mall across from the East LA Civic Center. It’s an interesting question, as we know that the Wilshire subway serves a Whiter community and more well-off area than, say, the West Santa Ana Branch Corridor, even though Wilshire will get several times the ridership of that line.

bbc

link for the map is wrong – it’s the same as link in text, not a higher res version of the map.

Phantom Commuter

The West Santa Ana Branch did pretty well in ridership projections. Maybe just as well as the incremental increase of the Purple Line extension. Might want to take a look at the numbers ?

calwatch

Well Grindal61 and Tressy Capps showed up at the San Bernardino office for the Environmental Justice workshop, hectoring poor Arnold San Miguel who runs that office. Their key point – “disband SANBAG and SCAG”. Really? It was like they wanted that Apple commercial moment where they throw the hammer into the screen, but in reality they looked like people on the fringe of the mainstream.

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